My contribution to a board
A board would gain three things from me. The first is the ability to read a digital service as its customers experience it, including customers who are older, disabled or under financial strain, and to turn that reading into questions management can answer with evidence. Directors are usually shown launch dates, adoption curves and cost savings. I can help a board ask what a service does to the customer who struggles most with it, how management knows and what fixing it would cost.
The second is experience of decisions in which doing right by customers meant giving up revenue or a client, and of presenting those decisions to boards without softening them. I have taken a fee change worth more than half a revenue line to a bank's risk committee, and a design restriction I knew might lose a client to a cooperative's board. I know what a management paper tends to leave out when it wants approval, because I have been tempted to leave those things out myself.
The third is a working understanding of customer data and third-party access. Many organisations outside banking now hold sensitive customer data that partners and apps want to reach, and few boards can see who reaches it. I can help a board ask for that picture and judge whether the answer is complete.
I am not a financial expert for audit committee purposes, a technologist or a security specialist, and I would not present myself as one. My natural place is a technology, customer or risk committee, where I would expect to serve a full year before taking any chair. I could also contribute to nominating work when a board is recruiting executives for digital or customer roles.
My first year on a board
Before my first meeting I would use the organisation's main digital service as a customer, once in the ordinary way and once with a screen reader and magnification, and I would call its contact centre with a routine question. I would read the last two years of board and committee papers on technology, complaints and customer outcomes, and ask the company secretary which papers directors had found hardest to use.
During the first six months I would meet the chief executive, the committee chairs, the executives responsible for digital services, data and complaints, and the head of internal audit. I would ask each of them the same question: which customer outcome does the board see least clearly? Until I had sat through a full cycle of the committees I joined, I would mostly ask questions rather than offer views.
In the second half of the year I would propose, if the board agreed, one improvement to what it receives: perhaps a measure of how often customers fail to complete essential tasks, or a list of the third parties holding customer data. One measure the board actually uses is worth more than a new dashboard nobody opens. At the end of the year I would ask the chair whether my contribution had matched what the board recruited me for, and whether my financial-services background had sharpened or narrowed my view of their business.
Conflicts and their management
My obligations to Lanternfield come first, and I would accept a seat only with our chief executive's written agreement and after our general counsel had reviewed it. That rules out a number of boards. I would not join a credit union or a bank, a provider of core or digital banking systems, a data aggregator, a payments company or any fintech that sells to or partners with credit unions, because Lanternfield competes with those organisations, buys from them or negotiates with them on our clients' behalf. I would also decline a board whose company was a significant supplier to Lanternfield.
On joining, I would give the chair a written list of my interests, covering my employment and incentive plan, Lanternfield's principal vendors and partners, my directorship at Lindgarth Low Vision Alliance and my personal investments, and I would update it whenever it changed. If a conflict arose on a particular matter, I would declare it before the discussion, leave the room and ask for the minutes to record it. If such conflicts began to recur, I would resign rather than remain a director who could not take part.
I would never bring Lanternfield's or its clients' confidential information into another boardroom, and I would not carry another board's information back into my executive work.
My independence statement
Whether I am independent is for the board to judge against the standards that apply to it, whether exchange listing standards or a mutual's own rules, and I would not pre-empt that judgement. My part is to put everything relevant in front of it: my employment and incentive arrangements at Lanternfield, the credit unions and vendors Lanternfield works with, my directorship at Lindgarth Low Vision Alliance and my personal investments. If the board concluded that any of these compromised my judgement on a matter, I would accept its view.
Judgement in practice
01Putting the likely loss of a client into a committee paper
When I proposed limiting what our client credit unions could customise in the shared app, I knew at least one long-standing client might leave. I said so in the paper to the product and risk committee, named the client I thought most likely to go and estimated the revenue at risk at about US$1.1 million a year. One director, who runs an owner credit union, argued that the restriction should be optional. I explained that an optional standard would leave disabled members dependent on their credit union's marketing choices. The committee approved the restriction with an exception route, and Hollin Prairie Credit Union left at its 2024 renewal. On a board I would want management to bring the probable losses of a decision into the paper itself, and I would protect the executives who do.
02Declining to embed an earned-wage access app
In 2023 nine client credit unions asked us to add a third-party earned-wage access product to the shared app. The provider's model relied on optional tips and fees for faster access, and our review found that members using similar products elsewhere often drew on them every pay period. I recommended that we not embed it and that we instead improve how the app presented the credit unions' own small-dollar loans, which the NCUA permits federal credit unions to offer within set limits. Several credit union chief executives were frustrated, and two offered the product through their own websites. I wrote down the conditions under which we would reconsider, covering disclosed costs and frequency of use, and the committee adopted them. As a director I would ask for that kind of written reconsideration test whenever management declines a popular request.
03Slowing a welcome grant until its data terms were clear
In 2022 a device manufacturer offered Lindgarth Low Vision Alliance a grant of US$240,000 for assistive technology training, on condition that we share anonymised usage data from the devices our clients borrowed. The board was inclined to accept, because the training was badly needed. I asked who would anonymise the data, whether our clients had been told and what the manufacturer would be allowed to do with it. Our executive director could not yet answer, and the board deferred the decision by a month. The revised agreement limited the data to device faults, required each client's consent and excluded resale, and the grant went ahead. As a non-executive I try to slow a good decision just long enough to learn what it commits the organisation to.
Committee contribution
Chair and member readiness| Capacity | Committees |
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| Ready to chair | Services or programme committee of a not-for-profit board (current) · Technology or customer committee, after a full year as a member |
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| Ready to join | Technology or digital committee · Risk committee of a consumer-facing organisation · Nominating and governance committee |
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Board and committee exposure
Served as a director
Lindgarth Low Vision Alliance
Board of directors; chair of the services committee from 2023
April 2021–present
Director of a Milwaukee not-for-profit providing vision rehabilitation, assistive technology training and peer support to about 3,000 people a year.
Member of a committee
Lindgarth Low Vision Alliance
Finance committee
2021–present
Reviews the annual budget, restricted grants and the reserve policy with the treasurer and two other directors.
Presented to the Board or a committee
Lanternfield Cooperative Technology
Board product and risk committee
2022–present
Presents the quarterly roadmap, accessibility completion rates, data-access risk and declined client requests; attends every meeting apart from executive sessions.
Presented to the Board or a committee
Lanternfield Cooperative Technology
Full board
2023–2026
Presented the design-system restriction in 2023, the data-access cutover plan in January 2025 and the annual product strategy.
Presented to the Board or a committee
Corriston Bancorp
Board risk committee
2020–2021
Presented the overdraft and returned-item fee redesign, its revenue effect and the complaints and losses evidence behind it.
Capacity and preferences
- Time available
- 22 days per year
- Current directorships
- 1
- Sectors
- Mutual and cooperative insurers · Healthcare payers and provider systems with large digital member services · Regulated utilities and consumer services with obligations to vulnerable customers
- Company type
- A mutual or cooperative, or a listed mid-cap company, whose customers depend on digital self-service for essential transactions
- Company stage
- An organisation moving essential customer services into digital channels, where accessibility, data permissions and fraud controls need board oversight
The seat I am pursuing
I am looking for one non-executive seat, on the board of a mutual insurer, a healthcare payer or provider system, or a regulated consumer services company whose customers depend on digital self-service for things that matter to them. I would like to join a technology, customer or risk committee and, after a full year, to chair one if the board wanted me to. I am most useful where a board is moving essential services online and wants a director who will ask how those services work for customers who are disabled, older or under strain, and who holds their data. I would not join a board looking for a fintech or digital name without a committee role, or one whose business sells to credit unions. Before going further with any approach I would want to understand what the chair thinks the board is missing, how the board currently sees complaints and data access, and how much time the role really demands.
Governance learning and readiness
IICA Independent Directors’ Databank: Not yet registered
The IICA Independent Directors' Databank applies to people seeking independent directorships of Indian companies. My career and the seats I am considering are in the United States, so I have not registered and do not intend to unless I am considered for an Indian board. A US board would assess my independence under its own standards.
- A director-education programme on board oversight of technology and cyber risk, completed in 2024
- Not-for-profit board service since 2021, including chair of the services committee from 2023
- Briefings from Lanternfield's outside counsel on credit union supervision and third-party oversight, 2023–2026
- A course on reading financial statements for directors without a finance background, 2025